After decades of being neglected, broad tapeworms now attract growing attention thanks to the increasing number of reports from humans but also thanks to many advancements achieved by application of molecular methods in diagnosis and epidemiological studies. Regarding sparganosis, unfortunately general uniformity of most species, their high intraspecific variability and lack of agreement among researchers has led to confusion about the classification of Spirometra/Sparganum species. For the first time we determined adult, eggs and plerocercoid life cycle stages and the molecular phylogeny of Sparganum proliferum obtained from endangered wild felids (Panthera onca, Leopardus pardalis, Leopardus guttulus and Herpailurus yagoauroundi) in one of the largest continuous remnants of worldwide biodiversity, the Atlantic Forest from South America. Our results showed that at least 57% of total species of wild felids in this natural area could act as definitive hosts of Sparganum proliferum. We conclude that the availability of more morphological characteristics are needed in order to secure reliable characterization and diagnosis of sparganosis. The integration of these data with molecular analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequences will be useful for species discrimination.¹

在被忽视了几十年之后，由于来自人类的报告数量不断增加，而且由于分子方法在诊断和流行病学研究中的应用所取得的许多进步，广泛的绦虫现在引起了越来越多的关注。关于裂头蚴病，不幸的是，大多数物种的总体一致性、种内变异性高以及研究人员之间缺乏共识，导致了螺蛳/裂头蚴物种分类的混乱。我们首次确定了从濒危野生猫科动物（ Panthera onca、Leopardus pardalis、Leopardus guttulus和Herpailurus yagoauroundi ）获得的成虫、卵和多尾蚴的生命周期阶段和分子系统发育，该区域是全球生物多样性最大的连续遗迹之一，来自南美洲的大西洋森林。我们的结果表明，该自然区域内至少 57% 的野生猫科动物可以作为三棱草的最终宿主。我们的结论是，为了确保对裂头蚴病进行可靠的表征和诊断，需要提供更多的形态学特征。这些数据与线粒体 DNA 序列的分子分析相结合将有助于物种区分。 ¹